When You Just Aren't Feelin It
I’m just not feelin it…nope. I just don’t have it today. I don’t want to do it today. I want all the things that I cannot have, and none of the things I possess. I’m tired of friends who quietly slip into the shadows; days that turn into weeks and months without end. Cold that creeps into my very soul until I just cannot get warm.
These were my thoughts today, thoughts one shouldn’t think; but felt so painfully close. We all find ourselves here sometimes. All our days aren’t sunshine and rainbows unfortunately. Life doesn’t hand out passes or do overs so disappointments and heart sickness can feel terminal…but God. When all the things around us scream for us to surrender to their pressing demands, all we really possess is our choice.
Choices make or break us into a thousand pieces. They swirl around our souls like a drain until we reach out and grab them. My feelings wanted to go straight down the drain along with my hope…but God. All my experience of my gracious God seemed to arrest me as I searched hard for something to grab onto, anything God may be trying to say that my heart is not hearing.
As I mindlessly scroll something catches my eye, I stop. Hmm. The words catch my eye and then my heart…keep going.
Keep going…
that’s all you have to do, EVER.
You really don’t have to be amazing, or fierce
or beautiful or successful or good.
JUST.KEEP.GOING, PLEASE.
Slowly is fine. Crawling is fine.
No feeling is final. Except HOPE.
(Glennon Doyle)
As surely as the darkness had laid over me, attempting to tuck me in for a long nap, these words jerked the darkness and flung it away like the suffocating blanket of lies it was. Just that quickly, the enemy of our very souls can suck us into his lies, attempting to hold us in his dark grasp…but God.
I don’t have to feel ok, or be ok, or do it all right every day. No one gets it right always. Life isn’t like that. Humans are after all human. So, I don’t feel condemned or less than or stupid. I feel…hope. Hope for another day of choices, another breath of life I get to take and keep going.
I imagine Jesus…my precious Jesus…as he awakens from a sleepless night after being arrested for crimes he didn’t commit, an inhumane beating no one deserves, being handed a heavy Cross to carry up a hill to die for me and you.
I imagine his thoughts as he sees that heavy wood…I can’t do it; I can’t carry it. Lord if there is another way…but there wasn’t. He must carry it. So he does…but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard…but God. Jesus faced hard on a level we know nothing of. My hard doesn’t compare but it’s still hard.
This time of year it seems attracts hard. It’s different for us all. We’ve lost loved ones who we will miss around the tree, broken relationships that haunt us, money that isn’t there, losses to great to bear we feel to our core; so, the darkness seeps into our souls like lava burning hope up in the wake.
We can let it be that way, or we can grab onto hope to keep going. It’s really that simple. God chooses to give us an olive branch, something to hold onto, but we must choose his choice. He heard my prayer, as my heart cried for answers. He knows. I had the choice to believe it or not; to accept his offering as a rope to pull me from the ledge…and I did.
Every day we are offered choices. Some days we fly high some days…well, we don’t…but God. I love the very clear message God so graciously sent me. It’s simple yet profound. We don’t have to be amazing, or fierce or perfect or get it right all the time. Simply KEEP GOING.
Father when the days are dark, when the answers don’t come like we had hoped; speak to our hearts, fill us with the hope only you can give. Speak to us the words we need to hear to keep going. Fill us with your presence and reveal to us the reality of your goodness; goodness that is available when we can’t see it or feel it. Guide us through the maze of uncertainty, the road that is dark and full of potholes. Give us the grace we need to choose to keep going. In your Sons precious name….amen.